Where does the time go? I can't believe it's already Wednesday! Today started with a migraine. As usual the weather in Texas is crazy! Yesterday was sunny and nice but today I woke up to cold rain and sleet!

I was very tired and I wanted to sleep but I'm determined to resume my morning workouts! So I dragged my tired body up took some meds and hopped on the elliptical. I love my new toy. Half hour later and I felt better although the headache persists.

My mornings are chaos especially now with no help at home. After I take the girls to school I head back home for an hour of cleaning. Today I dropped an entire brand new bottle of children's liquid Motrin on the kitchen floor! Noooo. Yucky.

Then I found out 2 employees were sick today and we are already short staffed. At lunch I had to run to the Girl Scout store.

Yep. I finally caved and let the girls join. been asking for a year or so and when their friends down the block joined there was no more resisting. Sigh. Luckily I missed cookie sales though. At least for this year. More juggling for me but they're sooooo happy!

My food is good this week and I've been tracking. I hope to see a loss when I weigh in on Monday. I'm working hard to get my water back where it should be. I've been closer the last few days. At least my sleep has improved and I'm sleeping better.

I feel like this is a boring post but that's all I've got today. One thing I've learned so far is keeping things routine for diet and exercise is WAY more successful. Routine but not boring! I went to TKD on Tuesday and started learning my new staff form. It's pretty badass. Maybe when I get it learned I'll post a video.

Food wise I'm loving the cara cara oranges we got at Cosco. Also bananas and apples. Found some jazz apples on sale. So tasty. Also I've been enjoying the Danon light Greek yogurt.

I'm posting some pics below of the sky here this morning and a few from my belt test. One is me delivering a hook kick and the other doing staff sparring. I CANNOT figure out how to place photos in the text with the blogger mobile app. But I'm sitting here in my daughters troop meeting so I thought I'd multi-task.

Until next time. Take care!

A Nice Valentine's

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all had a great day. I had a relatively uneventful and routine day. But I'm ok with that.

My husband woke me up with a kiss and a "Happy Valentine's Day" as he was leaving for work. I got the kids up and off to school and myself to work without difficulty. With 3 kids and a full time job that is a great morning.

The day went by quickly and the office was pretty quiet. The sun was shining and I suppose many people are out of town for a long weekend with the holiday on Monday. No complaints for me as I was able to finish my work in full for once before leaving the office.

At lunch I skipped TKD for a teleconference and a trip to the grocery store to pick up a few things and a prescription. I also picked up a pretty little hyacinth for my mom. She's been a great help since Nanny has been gone. I LOVE the smell of hyacinth!

In fact I have a lovely dark purple one from Mother's Day that Nanny got me last year that is blooming again! I'm so glad because I didn't even get it planted. Left it right in the pot!

Today I wore my new awesome sparkly shoes and matching sweater. I should have taken a pic but forgot and was too tired when I got home and after dinner. So instead I just took a pic of the shoes. I love shoes. Especially sparkly pretty colored ones.

I cooked dinner and we ate together as a family. It wad loud and silly and not romantic but definitely filled with love. As a special treat, I made chocolate covered strawberries. I ate 2 light on the chocolate. Other than that I ate well and healthy. I also came home to a lovely card and a new bag of gourmet coffee. Awesome yummy gift.

Tomorrow I'll be off work and have many errands and a hair appointment. We will have the whole house to ourselves tomorrow night since son has a Boy Scout camp out and the girls have a lock-in at the TKD gym. Not sure yet what we will do. We may just stay home and enjoy the quiet.

I hope you all had a great day. You CAN have a great Valentines without eating and drinking a bunch of junk. I did! Did you?

I couldn't do it. Can you?

The sun is shining today and I'm grateful. I could use a little vitamin D after a few days of cold and rain. But then I shouldn't complain too much since cold is relative. Our Texas cold is nothing compared to the hideous snow and cold others have had.

Today has been pretty good so far. I was tired when I woke up this morning. Not sure why but lately I'm just tired. It may be that I discovered I was out of my iron pills. Now that I'm back on them I hope to be better soon.

I woke up with a sore foot, especially my big toe. Last night at my first class as a red belt I attempted a new drill and......let's just say it didn't go exactly as planned. In the drill you're supposed to jump and kick the opponent in the groin as you fall onto the ground. Then you perform a take down from the ground with your legs. You've seen this in movies I'm sure.  The first time I tried I landed a little wonky on my left foot. It's sore and bruised, but no real damage. Thank goodness. I'll be working on that. Good news is I totally got the take down so IF I can just figure out how to jump, round house kick AND fall without killing myself, I'll be golden.

Work was the usual. Busy, stressful. Blah blah blah.

After work I changed and headed to TKD. Wednesdays there is a new weapons class which I have been enjoying. Learning more and more about the staff and knife defenses. So at the class the black belt that leads it is in his early 20s (I think) and the kid is a-maz-ing. He's won all kinds of competitions, etc. Tonight he had us warm up and stretch and then we spent 20 min working on and holding different stances. Think squats and lunges SLOW and DEEP and holding a staff with arms extended. We also did a one leg stance where you stand on one leg holding the staff down to block the ankle, opposite arm up in a fist position. I actually held that one fine for the whole 30 seconds. But the horse stance was HARD! Ugh. It was hard and my legs were shaking by the end of it.

He said we should get good enough that we can squat in a horse stance low and deep enough to rest our staff in our lap and balance it there. Ummm....sure. Some day, maybe. But, not yet. You can try it if you want. Just get a broom handle and squat, legs wide until your knees are at a 90 degree angle with the floor. Place the broom handle in your lap and lift your arms out straight in front of you.  Hold for about 20 seconds. Feel the burn. Ha ha. It takes a lot of balance and core strength. I could get there, but couldn't hold it for any amount of time yet. Some day.  Instead I stood in horse stance with my staff out balancing it on my arms. I was able to do that, but not the "very advanced" move. Ha ha. After those exercises, we had about 15 minutes for material and I worked on learning my new staff form.

After class, it was home and dinner and homework. Kids are in bed and here I am getting ready to hit the sack myself. Did I mention I've been tired? I'm also sore. I love being sore, but it is tiring. Son is up trying to finish a paper for his geography class. Sigh......I'm trying to teach him NOT to procrastinate. He comes by it naturally. I can't tell you how many times his dad waited until the night before to do projects and papers in college.

That's it for today. Good night! And let me know if any of you can do that horse-stance broom handle move.

I'm Seeing RED!

Over the last 2 weeks I've been focused on one goal: Getting my red belt. I've been to tons of TKD classes and working hard on mastering the material. It is amazing to me the amount of material we have to learn!  And I found out that after red belt the material basically doubles between now and black belt. Ack!

In fact there is so much material that we couldn't finish the test on Wednesday night. We had to go back and finish with sparring and board breaking on Saturday. I was SOOOO tired. I figured out that between classes and the test I spent 11 hours doing taekwondo last week alone. By Saturday morning I just wanted to get the test over!

Wednesday I got to the gym just before 5pm. The test was to start at 6:30pm and I wanted some time to warm up, stretch out and review. From 6:45-9:15pm we demonstrated the material:  4 advanced kicking drills, 2 staff forms, 5 staff one-step sparring, 7 regular one-step sparring, 3 breaking holds, 8 knife defenses, 10 forms, and multiple kicks-360 jump round house, 360 jump back kick,  step-360 crescent, change foot round house and jump round house and more. It was a LOT to cover in that amount of time! We were exhausted. We were testing with 13 year olds and up so it was decided to stop the test and finish on Saturday since everyone had work or school the next day. I'm hoping we don't have to do week night tests any more. This was the first time and it was pretty rough.

Saturday, I got the the gym around 12:30pm, warmed up and stretched. I was glad not to have to demonstrate material, but I have to admit I was tired and nervous. It might have been better to finish all at once. I didn't break my boards because I think I was just tired. I was pretty bummed. But, I did my best and that's what counts. I sparred and made it through without too much trouble or injury. One kid got kicked in the head and knocked out for a second so I had to take off the helmet and put on the doctor's hat. Luckily he was fine outside of a bruise and a small laceration on his tongue.

Finally, the scores were totaled and we were awarded our new belts. So super glad. Now I just have red-black belt and finally I'll be a black belt. Takes about 6 mo from now until my next test and then 6-8months between red-black and black. So I'm at least a year to 18months from black belt. Between now and then I've got to focus on cardiovascular fitness and weight loss. The black belt test is no joke.  At that test you have to do the "gauntlet" which is sparring multiple people for about 15minutes. It is pretty daunting. BUT, like I tell my kids-If it were EASY everyone would have a black belt. At the gym they tell us that about 2/3 quit before black belt. That seems about right knowing the number of people that have started and stopped since I've been there.

Anyway, I'm proud and glad I passed and I'm not quitting. No way. I want that black belt. I want it bad. I think in some ways I want it more than losing weight. Which is weird because I've got to do one to get the other. I've been tracking and I've lost a couple of pounds last week. Now it's time to restart P90X and get back on the elliptical and FOCUS on the food.  It's been really hard since I've been managing the household and meals all by myself. Thinking of getting some help until Nanny gets back. No excuses though. Today I've got turkey chili in the crock pot waiting at home. Healthy and yummy and  perfect for this yucky rainy day.

Hope all is well with all of you! What have you done lately that you NEVER thought you could?